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Monday, 3 July 2017

BAND
633 Squadron
Aladdin
Three Dances from “West Side Story”
Jurassic ParkCONCERT GROUP
Another Op’nin’of Another Show
Medley from “Beauty and the Beast”
Lullaby of Broadway
Medley from “Oliver”

INTERVAL

CONCERT GROUP
Chattanooga Choo-Choo
Medley from Jekyll and Hyde
Over the Rainbow from “The Wizard of Oz”BAND
Chicago
Soul Bossa Nova
Miss Saigon
Singin’ in the Rain
The Incredibles

Saturday 8th July 2017Abington Avenue United Reformed ChurchConducted by Graham TearNorthampton Concert Band (NCB) withNorthampton Musical Theatre Company - Concert Group (NMTC)633 Squadron - Ron Goodwin
arr. Goff Baldwin
This British film depicts the exploits of a fictional WW2 British fighter-bomber squadron. While critics derided the wooden acting and hackneyed plot, the aerial scenes were considered spectacular, and with Ron Goodwin's music, remained the main attraction.

Aladdin - Alan Menken
arr. John Moss
Composer Alan Menken and songwriters Howard Ashman and Tim Rice were praised for creating a soundtrack that is "consistently good, rivaling the best of Disney's other animated musicals from the '90s." Menken and Ashman began work on the film together, with Rice taking over as the lyricist after Ashman died in early 1991. Although fourteen songs were written for Aladdin, only six are featured in the movie, three by each lyricist. Arabian Nights | One Jump Ahead | Wedding Announcement | A Whole New World | Jafar’s Hour | Prince Ali | On A Dark Night | Friend Like Me | Happy Ending

West Side Story - Leonard Bernstein
arr. Ian Polster
Debuting on Broadway in 1957, West Side Story was inspired by William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. The score for West Side Story was orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal following detailed instructions from Bernstein, who then wrote revisions on their manuscript. Ramin, Kostal, and Bernstein are billed as orchestrators for the show. The orchestra consisted of 31 players: a large Broadway pit orchestra enhanced to include 5 percussionists, a guitarist and a piano/celesta player.In 1961, Bernstein prepared a suite of orchestral music from the show, titled Symphonic Dances from West Side Story:
We will be performing three of these: 1. Scherzo, 2. Mambo, 3. Cha-Cha

Jurassic Park - John Williams
arr. Paul Lavender
This early 90s science fiction film based on the novel by Michael Crichton was a big-budget blockbuster by Steven Spielberg. Composer John Williams began scoring the film at the end of February 1993, and it was recorded a month later.Similar to another Spielberg film he scored, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Williams felt he needed to write "pieces that would convey a sense of 'awe' and fascination" given it dealt with the "overwhelming happiness and excitement" that would emerge from seeing live dinosaurs.

The music lost out to the Academy Award for best Original Score which was awarded for Schindler's List, also composed by Williams.Northampton Musical Theatre Concert GroupAnother Op’nin’of Another Show - Cole Porter
"Another Op'nin', Another Show" is the opening number of Cole Porter's 1948 musical Kiss Me, Kate.
The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady and his ex-wife.
Kiss Me, Kate was Porter's response to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! and other integrated musicals; it was the first show he wrote in which the music and lyrics were firmly connected to the script, and it proved to be his biggest hit and the only one of his shows to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. The song was dropped from the 1953 film version of the musical.

Beauty and the Beast Medley - Howard Ashman and Alan Menken arr. Roger Emerson.
Walt Disney first attempted unsuccessfully to adapt Beauty and the Beast, based on the French fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, into an animated film during the 1930s and 1950s. Following the success of The Little Mermaid (1989), Walt Disney Pictures decided to adapt the fairy tale and in 1991 the film was released.
3 years later in 1994 a Broadway version of the musical was produced using the original eight songs from the film with an additional six songs composed by Menken and lyricist Tim Rice, replacing Howard Ashman who has passed away.

In the 2017 live action film version, the original songs were used and 4 new songs were composed by Menken and Rice.

Lullaby of Broadway - Al Dubin and Harry Warren
arr. Dave Wolpe
"Lullaby of Broadway" is a popular song with music written by Harry Warren and lyrics by Al Dubin, published in 1935. The lyrics salute the nightlife of Broadway and its denizens, who "don't sleep tight until the dawn."
Used in the stage production, 42nd Street, the show focuses on the efforts of famed dictatorial Great White Way director Julian Marsh to mount a successful stage production of a musical extravaganza at the height of the Great Depression.

Oliver! Medley - Lionel Bart arr. Norman Leyden
Based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, Oliver! (including the exclamation mark) premiered in the West End in 1960.

As well as writing British pop songs, including ‘Living Doll’ for Cliff Richard, Lionel Bart’s third musical ‘Oliver!’ was an instant success. Becoming the first British musical to be transferred to Broadway successfully.

INTERVAL

CONCERT GROUP

Chattanooga Choo-Choo - Mack Gordon and Harry Warren
arr. Mike Carubia.
Sun Valley Serenade is a 1941 musical film starring Sonja Henie, John Payne, Glenn Miller, Milton Berle, and Lynn Bari. It features the Glenn Miller Orchestra as well as dancing by the Nicholas Brothers and Dorothy Dandridge, performing "Chattanooga Choo Choo", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1996, and was awarded the first Gold Record for sales of 1.2 million.

Medley from Jekyll and Hyde - Leslie Bricusse and Frank Wildhorn
arr. Ed Lojeski
Jekyll and Hyde is a musical horror-drama loosely based on the novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

In an attempt to cure his ailing father’s mental illness by separating “good” from “evil” in the human personality, talented physician Dr. Jekyll inadvertently creates an alternate personality of pure evil, dubbed Mr. Hyde, who wreaks murderous havoc on the city of London. Struggling to control Hyde before he takes over for good, Jekyll must race to find a cure for the demon he has created in his own mind.

Over the Rainbow from “The Wizard of Oz” - E.Y.Harburg and Harold Arlen
Written for the movie The Wizard of Oz, Over the Rainbow was sung by actress Judy Garland in her starring role as Dorothy Gale. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became Garland's signature song, as well as one of the most enduring standards of the 20th century.

Today the song is seen as a song of hope, meaning many different things to many people and still has relevance today. Ariana Grande sang the song at the closing of the One Love Manchester benefit concert following the Manchester bombings that took place on the 22nd May 2017.

Northampton Concert Band

Chicago - John Kander
arr. Ted Ricketts
Set in Prohibition-era Chicago, the musical is based on a 1926 play of the same name by reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes she reported on. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal."
Watkins moved to Chicago and in early 1924 worked as a reporter with the Chicago Tribune. There she covered the murders and the subsequent trials of Belva Gaertner, a twice-divorced cabaret singer, and Beulah Sheriff Annan. Both women, after months of press coverage in Chicago's seven daily
papers, were found not guilty at trial. Watkins believed they were guilty.
Songs include: And All that Jazz | Cell Block Tango | Roxie | They Both Reached for the Gun

Soul Bossa Nova - Quincy Jones
arr. Denis Burton
Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. , also known as "Q", came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor, before moving on to work prolifically in pop music and film scores.
Quincy Jones claimed it took him only twenty minutes to compose the Soul Bossa Nova and it appeared on his 1962 Big Band Bossa Nova album.
The track was used in the opening sequence of Mike Myer's James Bond spoof film 'Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery'. Myers starred as both the title character Austin Powers and main antagonist Dr. Evil.

Miss Saigon - Claude-Micel Schonberg
arr. Warren Barker
Based on Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, Miss Saigon similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover. The setting of the plot is relocated to the 1970s Saigon during the Vietnam War, and Madame Butterfly's story of marriage between an American lieutenant and Japanese girl is replaced by a romance between an American GI and a Vietnamese bar girl. The musical was premièred at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on 20 September 1989, closing after over four thousand performances, on 30 October 1999. The show was revived this year on the West End in May (2014). The Heat Is On In Saigon, Sun And Moon, Morning Of The Dragon, The Last Night Of The World, The American Dream, I Still Believe.

Singin’ in the Rain - Nacio Herb Brown
arr. Allan Fernie
The film 'Singin' in the Rain' was originally conceived by MGM producer Arthur Freed, the head of the "Freed Unit" responsible for turning out MGM's lavish musicals, as a vehicle for his catalog of songs written with Nacio Herb Brown for previous MGM musical films of the 1929–39 period.
In the famous dance sequence in which Gene Kelly sings the title song while spinning an umbrella, splashing through puddles and getting soaked to the skin, Kelly was sick with a 103 °F (39 °C) fever. Filmed over a period of 3 days, the rain in the scene caused Kelly's wool suit to shrink during filming.

The Incredibles - Michael Giacchino
arr Jay Bocook
The Incredibles is the first Pixar film to be scored by Michael Giacchino and Giacchino's first big feature film. Brad Bird was looking for a specific sound as inspired by the film's design – the future as seen from the 1960s. John Barry was the first choice to do the film's score. However, Barry did not wish to duplicate the sound of some of his earlier soundtracks; the assignment was instead given to Giacchino.

The upbeat jazz orchestral sound was a departure in style not only for Giacchino but for Pixar, which had previously relied on Randy and Thomas Newman for all of its films.Giacchino was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2005 for The Incredibles: Best Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media and Best Instrumental Composition.